alt=Brandon JuddIn four years as Utah Valley’s men’s basketball coach, Mark Madsen built a program that experienced its greatest success as a Division I program.
Now, the beloved coach is moving from the Western Athletic Conference to the Pac-12.
Per multiple reports Wednesday afternoon, Madsen is taking over as the head coach of California’s moribund program.
UVU announced the move shortly thereafter.
“Mark Madsen has taken our program to unprecedented never-seen-before heights,” Utah Valley athletic director Jared Sumsion said in a statement. “I appreciate how much he cared about our student-athletes and we thank him for his service to our program. We wish him and his family the very best in his new role at Cal.”
Associate head coach Todd Phillips will serve as UVU’s interim head coach as a national search is conducted for the school’s next head coach, per the university.
For UVU, that means replacing a coach in Madsen that led the Wolverines to a 70-51 record over the past four seasons, including a program single-season record 28 wins this season.
It culminated in Utah Valley reaching the NIT semifinals in just the Wolverines’ second appearance in the prestigious postseason tournament, the best postseason run in school history.
UVU beat a pair of Pac-12 programs on the road this season, Oregon and Colorado (in the NIT second round), and beat crosstown rival BYU for a second straight year.
The Wolverines also won their second WAC regular-season championship in the past three years, this time outright.
“This team has great players, players that work,” Madsen told reporters after UVU lost to UAB in the NIT semifinals in Las Vegas on Tuesday. “And they just completed the best basketball season in UVU school history so I wanted to celebrate the players and the job they have done.”
One of Madsen’s senior leaders, guard Trey Woodbury, also spoke about the special season the Wolverines had, thanking coaches and teammates in the process.
“This is my favorite team I’ve ever played on. These are my favorite guys I’ve ever played with,” he said. “I’m just extremely grateful for these coaches and these players believing in me and giving me a chance to lead them this year, and it was an unbelievable season and run.”
Now, the focus for Madsen will be to hone in on how to rebuild a Cal program that never had a winning season in four years under previous head coach Mark Fox.
The Golden Bears also haven’t made the NCAA Tournament in seven years.
Cal last had a winning campaign in the 2016-17 season. Since then, the Golden Bears have averaged just 3.7 wins in Pac-12 play over the past six years.
And now, it’s on Madsen — the program’s third head coach since that last winning season for Cal — to turn things around.